Black Christian News Network | Wordpress Edition

At one time “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was considered a classic of American literature, one of the most well-known stories written by Mark Twain. The book was regularly taught in American public schools. However, in recent decades, the story about a boy named Huck and his runaway slave friend Jim who float up the Mississippi River on a raft during the 1930s, has become problematic at best. The reason is the use of a word that was common vernacular at the time Twain wrote the book that has become so obscene that it is only referred to as the “N word.” Therein resides the controversy in the latest screen adaptation of “Huckleberry Finn.”

The UK Daily Mail is reporting that the most recent screen adaptation of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is causing lots of controversy through its inclusion of the “N word” just as Mark Twain included it in his book.

Jonathan Feldman, the screenwriter of the latest adaptation, has been obliged to defend the word’s inclusion as being faithful to the book and the vernacular spoken at the time the story takes place. Others argue that the term has become so problematic in modern culture that it tends to distract from the plot and the themes of the story.